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Meat Cakes

A dish of minced cold meat mixed with bacon or anchovy, seasoned, formed into cakes, fried, and served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Meat Cakes

Why it works: Meat and anchovy work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 335 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Meat Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mince the cold meat, bacon, or anchovy finely.

  2. Season with pepper and salt, and mix well.

Shape and cook

  1. Form the mixture into small cakes, each three inches long, half an inch wide, and half an inch thick.

  2. Fry the cakes until light brown.

  3. Serve with gravy or place in a mold to boil or bake.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Meat + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together335 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Meat + hamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Ham + anchovytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together256 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Anchovy + peppertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Meat + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,777 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cold meat
Forms the main body of the patties and gives them their meaty flavor.
Fat bacon or ham
Adds fat and moisture so the patties stay juicy while cooking.
Anchovy
Adds a salty, savory depth to the mixture.

The step that matters

Fry the cakes until light brown. Frying over sufficient heat browns the surface through the Maillard reaction, creating flavor and color. Frying too gently or too long can dry the small cakes out or leave them pale and bland.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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